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| Ian Stuart Donaldson |
In the late 80s and throughout the 90s—years before dorks in polo shirts holding tiki torches marched through Charlottesville proclaiming that “Jews will not replace” us—the mainstream media made a whole to-do about the cult of skinheads.
Skinheads—and I’m talking about the white nationalist/white power variety, not Trads or SHARPS (skinheads against racial prejudice) with their goofy “Spirit of ‘69” patches—appeared on talk shows, were featured in special reports, and were the subject of a number of films. The most popular of these was the Edward Norton vehicle American History X (1998), but many people into more arty and independent cinema preferred Romper Stomper (1992) with Russell Crowe or This Is England (2006) to the afterschool special style melodrama of American History X.
My personal favorite in the skinhead genre is the Greydon Clark exploitation classic Skinheads: The Second Coming of Hate (1989). If you haven’t seen this gem, watch it now! It offers little in character study or development and a lot in goofy bad acting, copious violence, a soundtrack by Elvis Hitler, a group of skinheads "inconspicuously" driving around in a van with a giant swastika spray-painted on the side of it, and CHUCK MOTHERFUCKING CONNORS, a sort of poor man’s Charlton Heston.
But, of course, the white nationalist/Rock Against Communism skinheads didn’t just come onto your TV or movie screen from out of nowhere. As Robert Forbes’ and Eddie Stampton’s tome, The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement: UK & USA 1979-1993 attests, the movement consisted of real people who had and were willing to die for real beliefs.
It was primarily an underground musical movement that consisted of bands who terminated any chance of commercial success by blatantly expressing unpopular views and of people who felt that the only solution to a multicultural and multiracial society that they detested was to embrace full-blown National Socialism, or at very least, pro-white identity politics.
Furthermore, they felt that the mainstream conservatism of Margaret Thatcher, often derided by left-wing punks as being “fascist,” was too soft on immigrants and non-whites, and ultimately, beholden to Zionist and/or Globalist interests; they too thought Maggie was a “cunt” but perhaps for a different reason than that of Wattie Buchan of the Exploited. On top of that, many of these skinheads, in spite of being considered “far-right,” were actually against Capitalism, feeling that Capitalists were working in conjunction with Communists to flood their countries with cheap, Third World labor in an effort to oppress and displace white Britons.
Skrewdriver singer Ian Stuart, considered the big daddy head honcho of the entire white nationalist skinhead scene, even sided with the National Union of Mineworkers during the miners’ strike of 1984, and the group Skullhead labeled itself as a “Third Position” band.
I’ve recently come to enjoy my share of Skrewdriver—yes, the naughty Skrewdriver of the White Power/Rock-O-Rama era—because they can jam out. And when examining some of Stuart’s lyrics, they’re actually pretty unique and insightful. I can’t name any other bands that sang about the Russian invasion of Poland (“Poland”), predicted the fate of white people in a post-apartheid South Africa (“Strikeforce), or called out the elite music press for the cloistered leftists that they are (“Skrew You”).
But, sadly, for every interesting lyrical theme, including non-racial ones, like the plight of an out of work, rank ‘n’ file worker in “Pennies from Heaven”, the group also spewed drivel like this. And before you mention the double standard of black rappers being allowed to rap about “killing whitey,” I think that’s tacky and tasteless as well.
Also, make no mistake; Ian Stuart and his Skrewdriver compatriots, along with the members of the Ovaltinees, Brutal Attack, Peter and the Wolf, No Remorse, Skullhead, Public Enemy (no, not that Public Enemy), the Diehards, Above the Ruins, Pride of the Lion, and many other bands in the white nationalist skinhead movement, unapologetically hitched their wagon to neo-Nazism, making them untouchable to most record labels and concert promoters, and putting them on the furthest fringes of underground rock. And, let’s be honest here; violent neo-Nazi skinheads were not “misunderstood.” They often started and engaged in violence, whether at shows of bands whose views they didn’t like or when attacking minorities in the streets or at punk shows.
The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement tells the story of the UK white nationalist skinhead movement, from its nascent beginnings with the Punk Front in 1978 (more on that later) right up through the aftermath of Ian Stuart’s fatal car crash in 1993.
The book then concludes with a somewhat tacked on final chapter about the white nationalist skinhead movement in the United States, a topic which is far too interesting and involved to just be slapped onto the end of a book, and that this writer feels warrants a book of its own.
To put this into context, the UK white nationalist skinhead scene is a direct result of the National Front, an officially registered political party, recruiting skinheads and the odd sympathetic punk – the Punk Front – as early as 1977 to be their foot soldiers in marches and protests against multiculturalism, multiracialism, and immigration, before eventually finding a flagship band in the form of Skrewdriver, who influenced a bunch of other punk and Oi! bands to drop the apolitical veil.
Almost immediately after the release of Skrewdriver's “White Power” single, a network of bands, labels (well, one label to be precise), zines, and venues was established. On the other hand, the white nationalist skinhead scene in the United States was tied to no political party and instead consisted of a bunch of disparate cliques, gangs, crews, and chapters, where some articulate leader plucked disaffected teenagers out of hardcore punk gigs to help fight for the cause; the earliest example of this being CASH (Chicago Area Skinhead) leader Clark Martell handing out leaflets at hardcore shows in 1984.
In its early years, roughly 1984 – 1988, before Tom Metzger got involved and his organization WAR (White Aryan Resistance) put on its first white power festival, this so called “scene” primarily consisted of either a one-off white power band opening for a few hardcore punk shows before being “banned” from ever playing in their local punk scene or white power skinheads going to normal hardcore punk gigs to either cause trouble or show solidarity with bands who they thought were the closest to their cause.
The one foot in/one foot out of pro-white but not white power Youth Defense League, a New York hardcore/Oi! band that played with and hung out with normal hardcore bands like Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, Murphy’s Law, and Warzone but also cited Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack as influences and did an interview with the Blood and Honour zine, would NOT be tolerated today.
As former skinhead T.J. Leyden told me, before the United States had its own bands, white nationalist skinheads either imported Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack records from overseas or looked for the bands which seemed to express the most pro-white sentiment; according to Leyden, “White Minority” by Black Flag, “Guilty of Being White” by Minor Threat, and “Public Assistance” by Agnostic Front were all considered “pro-white anthems” at the time, even if Ron Reyes of Black Flag and Roger Miret of Agnostic Front are Latinos.
Anyone with a cursory knowledge of the white nationalist skinhead movement is aware that Skrewdriver came out of the proverbial closet in 1983 with their “White Power” single (b/w the arguably less offensive ditties “Shove the Dove” and “Smash the IRA”, no less!), which basically launched the entire white nationalist skinhead movement overnight, allowing Brutal Attack to drop their façade as an “apolitical” punk band (geez, their first tape release is a live recording of them opening for the U.K. Subs!), and leading to the formation of many other bands.
Yeah, yeah, I know that the Ovaltinees’ released a single a few months before “White Power,” but it’s not as if “British Justice” and its lyrics about “rioting monkeys” were what launched the movement; and had a movement never been launched, the Ovaltinees’ “British Justice” single would just be another obscure Oi! single for collectors to jizz all over, albeit with a particularly offensive set of lyrics.
Some argue that Stuart had already spearheaded the white nationalist skinhead music movement as early as 1982, when Skrewdriver released their nationalistic but non-racially themed “Back with a Bang” single. I disagree. It’s true that Ian Stuart had been a member of the National Front since 1980, and it’s also true that, during these gigs, Stuart was known to signal to his fans what side he was on by doing Hitler salutes. However these gigs were still performed at normal punk venues, such as the 100 Club, and had Skrewdriver broken up shortly after these gigs or kept their views hush-hush like so many of these other Oi! bands, Stuart’s involvement in the NF could have been plausibly denied, should Skrewdriver have wanted to be a normal band with a normal career. Of course, he did not choose that path…
The book tells the entire Skrewdriver story, along with the stories of all the other bands in the scene; and I mean, Stampton and Forbes tell you about every band they could possibly find in their archives of records, tapes, videos, and zines. They also go into how the label Rock-O-Rama became the first to release white power LPs, how all of the various bands involved in the white power scene split with the National Front to form the Blood and Honour organization, how uber-violent skinhead and Skrewdriver security man Nicky Crane came out as a homosexual in 1992 (later dying of AIDS), and, of course, how Ian Stuart was killed in a car crash in 1993; followed, ironically, by the release of the album Hail Victory.
This book leaves virtually no stone unturned. Some of the more interesting parts include Ian Stuart’s ridiculous side project the Klansmen, an attempt to get greasers and rockabilly fans into the white nationalist movement.
Now, I get the idea of starting a rockabilly or psychobilly side project and slapping some racially motivated lyrics on top. But in this case, Stuart made it into a whole conceptual project, re-purposing himself as some kind of Robert E. Lee figure and singing songs about the KKK and the American South, a place he had never actually been to; as if whistling Dixie and evoking Birth of a Nation would attract the pompadour and cuffed denim crowd. I wonder if Stuart realized that the Nazis weren’t even fans of the KKK, considering them to be, surprise, surprise, unsophisticated rednecks.
Another interesting tidbit is the inclusion of the anarcho-punk band the Apostles, who included a song called “Rock Against Communism” on their The Giving of Love Costs Nothing 7” EP in an apparent attempt to show solidarity with Skrewdriver. I suppose it’s possible for an anarcho-punk band to ignore the more progressive tendencies of bands like Crass in order to reach across the aisle to fight a “common enemy,” even if the two sides have vastly different visions of the society they want. Now, before some punk, who happens to stumble upon this writing, claims that I’m an idiot for not getting that the Apostles were being “ironic” and actually making fun of white nationalist skinheads, the group included the following essay with the 7” EP:
See, Combat 84 is one of them mainstream Oi! bands, who sing about safe right-wing topics, like advocating for the death penalty for rapists or telling the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) to “fuck off.” Incidentally, Combat 84 don’t have any actual racialist lyrics. Guitarist Deptford John, who later joined the Exploited, claimed that the group never aligned with any “far-right” political parties, which is probably true, even if Chubby Chris hung out with members of “far-right” political parties, and members of the group actually disowned their Send in the Marines LP, as it was issued against their will on the eeeevil Rock-O-Rama label.
Of particular interest to the punk rock historian might be the introductory chapter, which tells the story of the Punk Front, a movement started by Eddy Morrison, arguably the godfather of the entire Rock Against Communism movement. Although a few things have been written about it, albeit in a dismissive and/or a pearl clutching way, there is little information on the internet about the Punk Front, in spite the fact that it’s where the entire RAC movement began in the first place! You heard that right; way back in 1978, five years before Skrewdriver released their “White Power” single, when Ian Stuart and his buddies were still signed to Chiswick, played on bills with the Damned, the Police, the Adverts, 999, Sham 69, the Boomtown Rats, and Johnny Moped, sang innocuous punk tunes like “Antisocial,” “Too Much Confusion,” “I Don’t Like You,” “You’re So Dumb,” “Gotta Be Young,” “Back Street Kids,” and “Government Action,” and appeared on TV after getting into fights with Teddy boys, a punk band called the Dentists were playing songs with titles like “We Are the Master Race,” “Kill the Reds,” and, er, “White Power” to a crowd of National-Front-supporting punks, who wore their “Hitler was right” buttons and pogoed with their with right arms raised in the air.
Other bands in the Punk Front included the Ventz, who later became Tragic Minds when they went new wave/new romantic, the Crap, the Raw Boys, and White Boss.
It’s easy for the Jon Savages and the Garry Bushells to write off such a movement as insignificant to the history of punk, especially considering that the Dentists only played about ten gigs, but the fact remains that, there was a strong pro-white nationalist current in some punk circles, and this crowd made themselves known, apparently forcing leftist bands such as Gang of Four and the Mekons out of the blue collar Leeds area and back to their university “safe spaces.” On top of that, when non-politically-aligned punk bands, such as 999, played the F Club in Leeds, they apparently caused trouble for leftist and Rock-Against-Racism-supporting punks.
Curiously and somewhat ironically, Skrewdriver were prematurely associated with this early stage of RAC when Melody Maker claimed that they were supposed to play an RAC gig but backed out due to pressure from their label. In response Ian Stuart wrote an angry letter to Melody Maker claiming:
As for the rest of the text, outside of a moral or political context, it’s really just another book about an underground music scene, not too different from Albert Mudrian’s Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death & Grindcore, Dayal Patterson’s Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, or Steven Blush’s American Hardcore: A Tribal History. In all three, a central narrator tells the story of an underground music cult, including personal accounts from the people involved on the scene, passages out of newspaper and zine clippings from the era, and copious photographs, to help tell the story. In fact, in the case of Blush’s book, there’s even some crossover with the inclusion of the Portland, OR hardcore punk band Lockjaw.
Now, not to harp on what might seem like a trivial detail to most people, but I don’t really understand why Stampton and Forbes felt the need to even mention Lockjaw in the first place, since the jury is still out on how serious they really were about any nationalist or racial views they had. And, if we’re really going down this rabbit hole of wishy-washy, not quite white power bands, then why DIDN’T Stampton and Forbes mention White Pride, the fake white power band whose act was so convincing, that they had real white power fans and even had their recordings reissued by real white power labels?
One other thing that I think it’s at least somewhat important to clear up, is that Stamptons’ and Forbes’ book mentions that the Cro-Mags thank an “Ian Stuart” in the credits for their Best Wishes album, and as a result, SHARPs protested one of their shows. That type of lazy research is inexcusable. It was already cleared up way back in 1989 in a punk zine called Suburban Voice that the Ian Stuart who was thanked in the Best Wishes album credits is just some guy from Queens who the Cro-Mags were friends with and who went on their first tour with them. This really brings into question Stamptons’ and Forbes’ other claim that Youth Defense League were “good friends” with Ian Stuart of Skrewdriver, when it could just as easily have been this Queens based Ian Stuart. How exactly could they have been “good friends” with Skrewdriver’s Ian Stuart if YDL was based in New York? Were they pen-pals?
My only other real gripe about the book is that it’s just too damn long. I’m a detail-obsessed geek, but jeez Louise, Stampton and Forbes pad the book with so much superfluous text; either by allowing complete nobodies who happened to be on the scene at the time tell their pointless life stories or by describing every goddamn infinitesimal band that recorded a demo tape and played exactly one gig. These passages really make the book just draaaag. I’m all for Billy McSquiggles of the Aryan Stomper Boys talking about that time his band opened for Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack at the Barnacle Club on St. Martin’s St. in spite of protests and violent rebuke from the “Reds, man!” but I don’t need to hear about how this guy went to Catholic school, where he met the mates in his band, and that they were inspired by blah blah blah… zzzzz…
But, overall, The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement is a good and informative read. Of course, some of the reviews have attempted to put down the text on moral grounds, claiming that it was written by people who were actually involved with the white nationalist skinhead scene, and appear to not be all too repentant about it. Well, as we all know, this kind of critique is the epitome of ad hominem, and seems to be coming from the neurotic perspective, that if one isn’t constantly reminding you that this material and the people involved with it are eeevil, that one might succumb to its “charms”, JUST LIKE HITLER. Don’t worry about me becoming a Nazi; I’ve heard most of these bands, and they ain’t that good.
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My personal favorite in the skinhead genre is the Greydon Clark exploitation classic Skinheads: The Second Coming of Hate (1989). If you haven’t seen this gem, watch it now! It offers little in character study or development and a lot in goofy bad acting, copious violence, a soundtrack by Elvis Hitler, a group of skinheads "inconspicuously" driving around in a van with a giant swastika spray-painted on the side of it, and CHUCK MOTHERFUCKING CONNORS, a sort of poor man’s Charlton Heston.
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| Yes, books like this are still on Amazon |
It was primarily an underground musical movement that consisted of bands who terminated any chance of commercial success by blatantly expressing unpopular views and of people who felt that the only solution to a multicultural and multiracial society that they detested was to embrace full-blown National Socialism, or at very least, pro-white identity politics.
Furthermore, they felt that the mainstream conservatism of Margaret Thatcher, often derided by left-wing punks as being “fascist,” was too soft on immigrants and non-whites, and ultimately, beholden to Zionist and/or Globalist interests; they too thought Maggie was a “cunt” but perhaps for a different reason than that of Wattie Buchan of the Exploited. On top of that, many of these skinheads, in spite of being considered “far-right,” were actually against Capitalism, feeling that Capitalists were working in conjunction with Communists to flood their countries with cheap, Third World labor in an effort to oppress and displace white Britons.
Skrewdriver singer Ian Stuart, considered the big daddy head honcho of the entire white nationalist skinhead scene, even sided with the National Union of Mineworkers during the miners’ strike of 1984, and the group Skullhead labeled itself as a “Third Position” band.
I’ve recently come to enjoy my share of Skrewdriver—yes, the naughty Skrewdriver of the White Power/Rock-O-Rama era—because they can jam out. And when examining some of Stuart’s lyrics, they’re actually pretty unique and insightful. I can’t name any other bands that sang about the Russian invasion of Poland (“Poland”), predicted the fate of white people in a post-apartheid South Africa (“Strikeforce), or called out the elite music press for the cloistered leftists that they are (“Skrew You”).
But, sadly, for every interesting lyrical theme, including non-racial ones, like the plight of an out of work, rank ‘n’ file worker in “Pennies from Heaven”, the group also spewed drivel like this. And before you mention the double standard of black rappers being allowed to rap about “killing whitey,” I think that’s tacky and tasteless as well.
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| Brutal Attack's Ken McLellan |
The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement tells the story of the UK white nationalist skinhead movement, from its nascent beginnings with the Punk Front in 1978 (more on that later) right up through the aftermath of Ian Stuart’s fatal car crash in 1993.
The book then concludes with a somewhat tacked on final chapter about the white nationalist skinhead movement in the United States, a topic which is far too interesting and involved to just be slapped onto the end of a book, and that this writer feels warrants a book of its own.
Almost immediately after the release of Skrewdriver's “White Power” single, a network of bands, labels (well, one label to be precise), zines, and venues was established. On the other hand, the white nationalist skinhead scene in the United States was tied to no political party and instead consisted of a bunch of disparate cliques, gangs, crews, and chapters, where some articulate leader plucked disaffected teenagers out of hardcore punk gigs to help fight for the cause; the earliest example of this being CASH (Chicago Area Skinhead) leader Clark Martell handing out leaflets at hardcore shows in 1984.
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| National Front demo protesting Black-on-White crime |
The one foot in/one foot out of pro-white but not white power Youth Defense League, a New York hardcore/Oi! band that played with and hung out with normal hardcore bands like Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, Murphy’s Law, and Warzone but also cited Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack as influences and did an interview with the Blood and Honour zine, would NOT be tolerated today.
As former skinhead T.J. Leyden told me, before the United States had its own bands, white nationalist skinheads either imported Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack records from overseas or looked for the bands which seemed to express the most pro-white sentiment; according to Leyden, “White Minority” by Black Flag, “Guilty of Being White” by Minor Threat, and “Public Assistance” by Agnostic Front were all considered “pro-white anthems” at the time, even if Ron Reyes of Black Flag and Roger Miret of Agnostic Front are Latinos.
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| Ron Reyes of Black Flag |
Yeah, yeah, I know that the Ovaltinees’ released a single a few months before “White Power,” but it’s not as if “British Justice” and its lyrics about “rioting monkeys” were what launched the movement; and had a movement never been launched, the Ovaltinees’ “British Justice” single would just be another obscure Oi! single for collectors to jizz all over, albeit with a particularly offensive set of lyrics.
Some argue that Stuart had already spearheaded the white nationalist skinhead music movement as early as 1982, when Skrewdriver released their nationalistic but non-racially themed “Back with a Bang” single. I disagree. It’s true that Ian Stuart had been a member of the National Front since 1980, and it’s also true that, during these gigs, Stuart was known to signal to his fans what side he was on by doing Hitler salutes. However these gigs were still performed at normal punk venues, such as the 100 Club, and had Skrewdriver broken up shortly after these gigs or kept their views hush-hush like so many of these other Oi! bands, Stuart’s involvement in the NF could have been plausibly denied, should Skrewdriver have wanted to be a normal band with a normal career. Of course, he did not choose that path…
The book tells the entire Skrewdriver story, along with the stories of all the other bands in the scene; and I mean, Stampton and Forbes tell you about every band they could possibly find in their archives of records, tapes, videos, and zines. They also go into how the label Rock-O-Rama became the first to release white power LPs, how all of the various bands involved in the white power scene split with the National Front to form the Blood and Honour organization, how uber-violent skinhead and Skrewdriver security man Nicky Crane came out as a homosexual in 1992 (later dying of AIDS), and, of course, how Ian Stuart was killed in a car crash in 1993; followed, ironically, by the release of the album Hail Victory.
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| Nicky Crane, the closet days |
Now, I get the idea of starting a rockabilly or psychobilly side project and slapping some racially motivated lyrics on top. But in this case, Stuart made it into a whole conceptual project, re-purposing himself as some kind of Robert E. Lee figure and singing songs about the KKK and the American South, a place he had never actually been to; as if whistling Dixie and evoking Birth of a Nation would attract the pompadour and cuffed denim crowd. I wonder if Stuart realized that the Nazis weren’t even fans of the KKK, considering them to be, surprise, surprise, unsophisticated rednecks.
Another interesting tidbit is the inclusion of the anarcho-punk band the Apostles, who included a song called “Rock Against Communism” on their The Giving of Love Costs Nothing 7” EP in an apparent attempt to show solidarity with Skrewdriver. I suppose it’s possible for an anarcho-punk band to ignore the more progressive tendencies of bands like Crass in order to reach across the aisle to fight a “common enemy,” even if the two sides have vastly different visions of the society they want. Now, before some punk, who happens to stumble upon this writing, claims that I’m an idiot for not getting that the Apostles were being “ironic” and actually making fun of white nationalist skinheads, the group included the following essay with the 7” EP:
Skrewdriver are still one of my favorite bands… Now I don’t pretend to agree with the lyrics to all of their most recent material, including some of the more overtly racialist items on their last two singles, but they do stand shaved head and shoulders above all the other bands who in fact were just as right-wing but hadn’t the courage or the timidity to admit it publicly… Skrewdriver have had the courage of their convictions, stuck to their guns and been blacked by the Communist infiltrated, Zionist-funded music press. Free speech anyone?Perhaps a more “problematic” portion of the book—that is for the modern day Oi!-loving skinhead who wants to claim that Oi! bands aren’t “racist”—is when Combat 84 singer Chubby Chris Henderson was involved with a crew of white power skinheads, including various members of the Ovaltinees, Peter and the Wolf, and Skrewdriver, in an attack on the Redskins—whose name isn’t a reference to the American Indian, but meant to signify that these are Communist skinheads—when they performed at the Greater London Council’s open air "Jobs for a Change" festival.
See, Combat 84 is one of them mainstream Oi! bands, who sing about safe right-wing topics, like advocating for the death penalty for rapists or telling the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) to “fuck off.” Incidentally, Combat 84 don’t have any actual racialist lyrics. Guitarist Deptford John, who later joined the Exploited, claimed that the group never aligned with any “far-right” political parties, which is probably true, even if Chubby Chris hung out with members of “far-right” political parties, and members of the group actually disowned their Send in the Marines LP, as it was issued against their will on the eeeevil Rock-O-Rama label.
Of particular interest to the punk rock historian might be the introductory chapter, which tells the story of the Punk Front, a movement started by Eddy Morrison, arguably the godfather of the entire Rock Against Communism movement. Although a few things have been written about it, albeit in a dismissive and/or a pearl clutching way, there is little information on the internet about the Punk Front, in spite the fact that it’s where the entire RAC movement began in the first place! You heard that right; way back in 1978, five years before Skrewdriver released their “White Power” single, when Ian Stuart and his buddies were still signed to Chiswick, played on bills with the Damned, the Police, the Adverts, 999, Sham 69, the Boomtown Rats, and Johnny Moped, sang innocuous punk tunes like “Antisocial,” “Too Much Confusion,” “I Don’t Like You,” “You’re So Dumb,” “Gotta Be Young,” “Back Street Kids,” and “Government Action,” and appeared on TV after getting into fights with Teddy boys, a punk band called the Dentists were playing songs with titles like “We Are the Master Race,” “Kill the Reds,” and, er, “White Power” to a crowd of National-Front-supporting punks, who wore their “Hitler was right” buttons and pogoed with their with right arms raised in the air.
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| The Dentists 1979 |
It’s easy for the Jon Savages and the Garry Bushells to write off such a movement as insignificant to the history of punk, especially considering that the Dentists only played about ten gigs, but the fact remains that, there was a strong pro-white nationalist current in some punk circles, and this crowd made themselves known, apparently forcing leftist bands such as Gang of Four and the Mekons out of the blue collar Leeds area and back to their university “safe spaces.” On top of that, when non-politically-aligned punk bands, such as 999, played the F Club in Leeds, they apparently caused trouble for leftist and Rock-Against-Racism-supporting punks.
Curiously and somewhat ironically, Skrewdriver were prematurely associated with this early stage of RAC when Melody Maker claimed that they were supposed to play an RAC gig but backed out due to pressure from their label. In response Ian Stuart wrote an angry letter to Melody Maker claiming:
The biased information that appeared recently in your paper, and which RAR seem to be responsible for, is false. The news that Skrewdriver is reforming to do NF gigs is complete and utter bullshit. I have no interest in politics and never have. I’ve also been told that RAR has solid links with the Anti-Nazi League, an organization who, it seems are backed heavily by the Communist and Marxist parties, who in their own way are just as much of a threat to this country as the NF or BM. I’m at present forming a new band which is not called Skrewdriver, and don’t intend on doing gigs for the RAR, NF, or any other political organizations.Well, so much for that…
As for the rest of the text, outside of a moral or political context, it’s really just another book about an underground music scene, not too different from Albert Mudrian’s Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death & Grindcore, Dayal Patterson’s Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, or Steven Blush’s American Hardcore: A Tribal History. In all three, a central narrator tells the story of an underground music cult, including personal accounts from the people involved on the scene, passages out of newspaper and zine clippings from the era, and copious photographs, to help tell the story. In fact, in the case of Blush’s book, there’s even some crossover with the inclusion of the Portland, OR hardcore punk band Lockjaw.
Now, not to harp on what might seem like a trivial detail to most people, but I don’t really understand why Stampton and Forbes felt the need to even mention Lockjaw in the first place, since the jury is still out on how serious they really were about any nationalist or racial views they had. And, if we’re really going down this rabbit hole of wishy-washy, not quite white power bands, then why DIDN’T Stampton and Forbes mention White Pride, the fake white power band whose act was so convincing, that they had real white power fans and even had their recordings reissued by real white power labels?
One other thing that I think it’s at least somewhat important to clear up, is that Stamptons’ and Forbes’ book mentions that the Cro-Mags thank an “Ian Stuart” in the credits for their Best Wishes album, and as a result, SHARPs protested one of their shows. That type of lazy research is inexcusable. It was already cleared up way back in 1989 in a punk zine called Suburban Voice that the Ian Stuart who was thanked in the Best Wishes album credits is just some guy from Queens who the Cro-Mags were friends with and who went on their first tour with them. This really brings into question Stamptons’ and Forbes’ other claim that Youth Defense League were “good friends” with Ian Stuart of Skrewdriver, when it could just as easily have been this Queens based Ian Stuart. How exactly could they have been “good friends” with Skrewdriver’s Ian Stuart if YDL was based in New York? Were they pen-pals?
My only other real gripe about the book is that it’s just too damn long. I’m a detail-obsessed geek, but jeez Louise, Stampton and Forbes pad the book with so much superfluous text; either by allowing complete nobodies who happened to be on the scene at the time tell their pointless life stories or by describing every goddamn infinitesimal band that recorded a demo tape and played exactly one gig. These passages really make the book just draaaag. I’m all for Billy McSquiggles of the Aryan Stomper Boys talking about that time his band opened for Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack at the Barnacle Club on St. Martin’s St. in spite of protests and violent rebuke from the “Reds, man!” but I don’t need to hear about how this guy went to Catholic school, where he met the mates in his band, and that they were inspired by blah blah blah… zzzzz…
But, overall, The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement is a good and informative read. Of course, some of the reviews have attempted to put down the text on moral grounds, claiming that it was written by people who were actually involved with the white nationalist skinhead scene, and appear to not be all too repentant about it. Well, as we all know, this kind of critique is the epitome of ad hominem, and seems to be coming from the neurotic perspective, that if one isn’t constantly reminding you that this material and the people involved with it are eeevil, that one might succumb to its “charms”, JUST LIKE HITLER. Don’t worry about me becoming a Nazi; I’ve heard most of these bands, and they ain’t that good.
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